Valley Street

• Valley Street runs down from the Damascus Gate straight through the Muslim Qarter to the Western Wall Plaza. In Arabic the street is called el-Wad and in Hebrew Ha-Gai, which all mean the same. (The Hebrew name is confusing because eMap lists Ha-Gai Street to the west of the Givat Ram Hebrew University campus. I think that street is actually named for Hagai, as it appears on the Carta paper map, the prophet. eMap is weak on street names within the Old City, but Carta has them on paper.)
• In Roman times Valley Street was Cheesemakers' Way, and Olive Merchants to the Crusaders.
• Near the Dung Gate (Ashpah in Hebrew, Mugrabi in Arabic) you can walk on the Roman Street and see a mural of what the street probably looked like when Romans controlled the city as much as anone ever has.
• At ten am AM Staturdays, groups of people chat in several langrages under the palm trees at Kikar Safra, in front of City Hall. Follow as the group coalesces around two guides. One will give a welcome in Hebrew, but you will soon hear English from the other. Although the Hebrew and English tours take different routes, through the year most routes are covered in both languages. This week's English along Valley Street was the best English-language tour I've been on.
• Even by yourself you can ring the bell at the Austrian Hospice and climb to the roof for an excellent comprehensive view.

Copyright 2006 Jane S. Fox

Local Entertainment

• If you can get away from your tour in the evening, enjoy a concert at Beit Shmuel (http://www.beitshmuel.com/index.htm), the Jerusalem Theater (http://www.jerusalem-theatre.co.il/default.asp), or Beit HaCohnfedehrahtsia (http://www.confederationhouse.org/english/ ). If the concierge at your hotel cannot tell you the schedule, phone any of these venues and ask in English, or email in English.
• Don't worry about feeling lost. Many people at each place speak English. Many of the concert goers are native speakers (called in Hebrew "anglosaxim"). All three places are in walking distance of the htels on Jabotinsky and King David Streets.
• At the Jerusalem theater and Beit HaConfederatzia you can have a good meal or a glass of wine before or after the concert. Beit Shmuel has a smaller cafe, which is not open as late.
• In my experience, Jerusalem concerts are scheduled for late and start later, but the lobbies in all three places are pleasant. At the theater there is a small book and music store and a changing art exhibit. Often there is also live music in the lobby.
• The Turkish music concert Tuesday at Beit HaConfederatiza was good but a bit academic. The explanations interfered with building excitement. The Oud Festival and the concert of Ethiopean music were hard to live up to.

Copyright 2006 Jane S. Fox

Snow Arrives

• Yesterday afternoon the heavy rain turned to wet snow (http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/12/snow.html ).
• By 7, the police blocked the twisty roads into Jerusalem. The city grew muffled. Wet white covered cars and trees, streets and sidewalks. Kids stayed up late to play in the snow. If it snows when you are in Jersualem, go outside, even if your shoes are not waterproof. Enjoy the atmosphere, and stuff crumpled newspaper in your shoes when you return to your hotel. (http://www.jerusalemshots.com/Jerusalem_en2-417.html )
• At night, all precipitation stopped. By 8 AM liquid water once more coursed down the streets, this time from melting snow.
• In the shade, walked-on slush makes sidewalks look threatening. The sun is warm, the breeze light.
• Clothed by LandsEnd from throat to wrists and ankles, I am warm. If traveling to Israel in winter, remember that a set or two of silk long underwear takes up almost no space.

Copyright 2006 Jane S. Fox.

Watershed

• Rain glorious rain. Hours and hours of heavy rain. The forecast still says snow for the afternoon.
• A guide said that the top of Agron (http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/09/walkng.html and http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/09/4-to-terra-sancta.html et al.) is the change in watershed.
• Water courses down Agron headed for the Dead Sea. What is streaming down Aza is on its way to the Mediterranean.

Copyright 2006 Jane S. Fox

Snow

• Snow is predicted for Jerusalem. It depends, says the meteorologist, on seven tenths of a degree (celsius) temperature drop tomorrow afternoon.
• Already the excitement is building. The education department has set up an information center. The municipality has checked its emergency plans.
• At the little store around the corner (http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/12/charity.html ) Shlomi says he'll sleep in town tonight. He lives in Mvaseret, a suburb down a long hill from here and up another. "With the first flake they'll be lined up to buy bread and milk," he says.
• "And will the bread and milk arrive?"
• "Of course. Bread, milk, and newspapers are aways here before I am."
• The snow will not be on the ground for more than a day. By Thursday afternoon it will all be gone.
• Hmm. If they close the Tnuva dairy in Jerusalem, will there be milk in the stores on the day of next year's snow?

Copyright 2006 Jane S. Fox

Beit HaConfederatzia

• At Beit HaConferatia last night we heard compositions written by an Ethioiean immigrant and inspired by Ethiopian Jewish music. Inspired indeed.
• We entered the small auditorium to see a piano, contra-bass, and saxophone waiting on the low stage. Were we in the right place?
• Two men and a woman went up the two steps. The first man's face said his family had spent 2500 years in Persia. He went to the piano. Yitzhak Yedid. The woman who took up the contra-bass was even paler. Ora Boazson Horev. The third onto the stage was darker skinned, Abate Berihun, an Ethiopian name. He was the inspired composer. He picked up the saxophone. He was the composer.
• Later two dark, thin men, a singer and a dancer, joined the three intrumentalist-singers. Patago Mulukan Yaakov and Aicho Beya. With their narrow faces and bodies they fit the Ethiopean stereotype. The music did not, but then I have no stereotypes for medieval Ethiopian music except that I expect the instruments to be less familar.
• Never mind. From the bass (played pizzicato in all but two of the pieces), the piano (no chords), and the saxaphone the musicians drew music that spoke to us in a strange language and compelling.
• Beit HaCenfedratsia is behind the King David Hotel garden. It also hosted some of the Oud Festival concerts. Ticket agencies can usually tell you what delights are scheduled.

Copyright 2006 Jane S. Fox

Entertaining Children

• Children like the energy-saving lights in Jerusalem stairwells. They push the button to trun on the light, wait on the landing until the light goes out, push the button again. One races ahead to push the button o,n a higher landing. That extends the time the light is on.
• For a child used to the family car riding a bus is an adventure -- a city bus where you give the driver money and get change and the printer prints out your ticket. You can keep the ticket as a souvenir. The bus starts moving before you get to a seat. It winds back and forth through narrow streets, up hill and down. Who needs Disneyland?
• Taxis. Another treat! "Good thing I'm a city kid and I can hail a cab" goes the song. (Googl ehas failed to identify the source.) It's magic for a midwestern kid. I wave my hand and a car stops, ready to take us anywhere.
• The shouk (http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/06/abundance.html )can be almost too exciting. "What are those men shouting?" asks an eight-year old. He stands very close to me. "Bananas two and a half shekels a kilo," I tell him "Clementines three shekels a kilo." He moves a little away from me and listens. "Yes," he says. "I hear 'bananas' and 'kilo.'"
• For kids who don't like strange food, there's pizza. Many pizza parlors squeeze fresh juice (http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/07/juice.html ).

Copyright 2006 Jane S. Fox

Lights

• All along the street, oil lamps flicker in glass enclosures. Some buildings have a glass-doored niche built into the wall along the sidewalk. Elsewhere families put the lights on a kitchen chair or small table beside their gate.
• If you are in Jerusalem during Hanuka (minimalist spelling), go out between 5:30 and 6 and stroll around a neighborhood where people put their hanukiot outside.
• Ha'Shla St. in the Sha'arei Khesed neighborhood is a good place to start. See eMap (http://www3.emap.co.il/eng_index.asp) for directions. Keep turning corners to see more and more of the lights, tiny but lovely.
• In windows, candles burn in greeting-card "menorahs."
• See also http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/12/soufganiot-and-krembo.html and http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/10/all-together-now.html and http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/02/unexpected-february-entertainment.html

Copyright 2006 Jane S. Fox

Sidewalk Cafes

• We want rain. By now, even people who hate grey skies want rain (http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/11/rain.html ). Without rain in the north, the Kineret (Sea of Galilee) will soon become a skateboard park. Without rain here, the aquifers will become more and more depleted as the water board pumps and pumps to keep faucets flowing.
• In October and November, we had two or three days of rain. Since then, unfulfilled promises.
• During the day, it is shirtsleeve-warm in the sun. Towards evening, restaurants with tables on patios or on the sidewalk (http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/07/mint.html ) spread awnings and to them attach waterproof walls, clear on the street side. When it is truly cold (in Mediterranean terms) tall braziers will heat the space.
• I sit out on my balcony. This may be the last sunny day to enjoy. I hope.

Copyright 2006 Jane S. Fox

Sufganiot and Krembo

• By the time Hanuka (minimalist spelling) arrives, many people have eaten as many soufganiot http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/10/soufganiot.html as they want. I held off. This morning I bought one at the shouk (on Yafo between Mahaneh Yehuda Street and Eitz Khattim), still warm. The traditional explanation for eating soufgaiot during Hanuka is that, like lvivot (latkes) they are cooked in oil, and this is a reminder of the purified oil that lasted longer than expected after the Macabees cleaned the Temple. I am indebted to Jacky Levi for the explanation that eating soufganiot is the ultimate repudiation of the Hellenistic cult of the beautifuly trim body.
• A commenter at http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/11/crembo.html remembers the confection as spelled with a k in English. He may well be right, although the package I bought had no English on it. I have typed "crembo" as a weak, bilingual pun, defining crembo lucus a non lucendo (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucus_a_non_lucendo ) because it has no cream in it (bo).

Copyright 2006 Jane S. Fox

Bread

• Thursday evening I went on a walking tour called "Not by Bread Alone." The more apt "Mainly Bread" would have lacked Biblical resonance.
• We started across Agrippas from the Shouk, the area described in http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/06/one-block-from-agripas.html and named Mazkeret Moshe, although I did not know that when I first wandered into it. Here was an unsuccessful 19th century wheat field. Jerusalem has not had a climate for wheat -- probably since before wheat was domesticated. On to Ohel Moshe (both undoubtedly named for Sir Moses Montefiore) where we heard tales of bread-related customs of the Jews of Yanina (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ioannina ; Yanina is mentioned in the Count of Monte Cristo). From there to the shouk, because it is an experience not to be missed on a Thursday night and there are plenty of bakery stands, with stories to be told of their history.
• At a Kabbalist center across Yafo and down Takhimoni, a jolly young rabbi told us about mystical meanings of bread and then called his father up the long flights of stairs to tell us a little more and bless us. Whatever else they spend contributions on, it is not on beautifying their bare, but very clean, building.
• At the Avihail Bakery (Rehov Pri Khadash 8; find it on emap http://www3.emap.co.il/eng_index.asp ; the number 4 bus has a stop on Straus, not far from the intersection. I bought some of the best bread rolls I've had this year -- and that is saying a lot. Now that the neighborhood has gone Khareidi, women might feel more comfortable walking to this bakery wearing a knee-covering skirt and a blouse with sleeves (http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/10/between-meah-shearim-and-zichron-moshe.html ). Commandments of hospitality are not well-observed by haredim except to people who dress the way they do. The bakery owner and his employees, however, not being haredim, are very hospitable and nice whatever you are wearing.
• We paused for tales of bread-related customs of Jews whose families lived for centuries in Gyorgia.
• We went to two more bakeries, one tiny operation with a blowtorch-heated brick oven and the other a Persian bakery, both deep in Meah She'arim, where men dress either like early ninteenth-century Christians in Polish cities or wear zebra-striped coats patterned after the style of Jerusalem Arabs, also of the 19th century. Strange place.
• See also http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/08/bakery.html

Copyright 2006 Jane S. Fox

Charity

• A wooden charity box sits on the counter of the store around the corner(http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/11/dairy-products.html and http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/05/my-jerusalem-neighborhood.html ). all it says is "Tsdakah" (charity).
• "Where does the money go?" I asked Shlomi.
• He waited until the other customer left, lowered his voice and started, "There's a family ..."
• "OK," I said, dropping change in the box. "You don't have to tell me any more. I just wanted to make sure that it wasn't something political."
• "Two things I don't allow in this store," he said. "Politics and religion."
• Unique.

Copyright 2006 Jane S. Fox

Bourekas

• So where do you buy the best (in my opinion) bourekasim?
• The shop is on Mahaneh Yehuda Street, which is the uncovered part of the shouk. It is close to Agrippas Street between two shops selling nuts and dried fruit and across from another.
• Bourekas is what they do -- filled with spinach or mushrooms or various types of white cheese (http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/11/dairy-products.html ). They also bake an unfilled, pritzel-shaped variety. This the will split and spread with fresh white cheese. If you eat there, at the counter along the wall or at one of the small tables out front, they may put a slow-cooked egg and a pickle on your wooden plate. If that's what you want, point at the picture hanging from the ceiling near the cash register.
• The best, I say, but there's a place on Rehov HaNeviim I want to try.

Copyright 2006 Jane S. Fox

Orchid Pudding

• When days grow shorter and cooler, samovars replace the sorbet machines. these dispense hot orchid pudding, "sakhlab."
• The shop with the best (to my taste) bourekas in the shouk also sells the best sahkhlab. On top, they sprinkle grated cocoanut, cinnamon, and chopped peanuts. I taste those, and beneath that, in the hot, slippery pudding, what must be orchid.

Copyright 2006 Jane S. Fox

El Marrakesh

• The El Marrakesh has just the gaudy decor you want in a Moroccan restaurant. On the walls are photos of notables who (I assume) have eaten threr or who are friends of the family that owns the place.
• If you eat a full hotel breakfast I advise eating nothing else the day you go there for dinner.
• The host will greet you with a choice of arak or sweek vermouth. Soon little dishes of salads cover the giant round coppery tray that serves as a table. The thin slices of eggplant are excellent, and so is everything else: kholrabi, cucumbers, dressed spinach, tiny sweet tomatoes in chopped onion dressing, delicious humus, red bell peppers done in a way I've tried to copy without success, beets, and five or six others.
• Next come hot appetizers: potato pastilles and triangles, stuffed grape leaves, and chicken with nuts in pastry. Pace yourself.
• The main dishes come with couscous and steamed vegetables.
• Afterwards they bring sesame pastries, pears with chocolate and honey, and hot mint tea sweetened the way it should be at an Eastern meal, poured from a decorated metal teapot into small painted glasses..
• During our meal yesterday, friends and relatives of the host wandered in and out.
• El Marrakesh is on King David Street, right across from the David's Citadel Hotel, about a block from the King Davit, and a five-minute walk from Kikar Tsion or from the Jaffa Gate. It's expensive for Jerusalem. The meal, with two large glasses of wine and a generous tip came to about 100 USD.

Copyright 2006 Jane S. Fox

Angry Archaeologist

• Friday we heard a lecture by an archaeologist who has been sifting dirt trucked by the Temple-Mount wakf a few years ago from the Temple Mount to nearby valleys after they bulldozed an entrance to the new mosque in "Solomon's Stables."
• "Bulldozed" is a word archaeologists dislike intensely. Archaeologists work with trowels, spoons, and sieves. The lecturer said that the wakf sent away its own archaeologist before bringing in the bulldozers.
• Finding any remnants of the First Temple on the Temple Mount would disprove the revisionist view that there were no Jews, nor yet Children of Israel, 3000 years ago.

Copyright 2006 Jane S. Fox

City Hall

• I wondered why anyone would want to tour City Hall.
• The view from the roof is wonderful!

Copyright 2006 Jane S. Fox

Urban Planning

• The Jerusalem Municipality has a plan to widen Rehov HaNeviim ((http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/10/street-of-prophets.html ). This would mean tearing down beautiful walls and buildings, some a century and a half old. Perhaps facades would be preserved as the are on Rehov Yafo near the shouk.
• The Jerusalem Municipality has a plan to build a parking ramp on the hill overlooking the Valley of the Cross ((http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/06/view.html ) from the east. This would require destroying the park.
• The Jerusalem Municipality has a plan to allow two high-rise hotels in the Moshava ((http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/10/german-colony.html ). One would be built over the German Templar meeting house, an architectural gem at the apex of the triangle.
• I think that the streets division of the transportation department considers only transportation and the parking division only cares about meeting parking goals. What the building-permit people have in mind is murky.

Copyright 2006 Jane S. Fox

Italian Hospital

• The Italian Hospital (see photo of its tower at http://www.travelblog.org/Photos/182699.html ) is an imposing building in three parts: two massive hospital wings flank a huge church, all in the style of Italian architecture at the end of the 19th century. Diagonally across Rehov HaNeviim (http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/10/street-of-prophets.html ) from Frutiger's Beit Mahanaim (http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/12/frutiger.html ), it, too, now houses Ministry of Education offices.
• During World War I, the Ottoman Turks (http://wsu.edu/~dee/OTTOMAN/OTTOMAN1.HTM ) expropriated it from the Italians (who were fighting against them and the Germans), and it suffered damage. After the war, the original architect saw to its rebuilding.
• During World War II the British (http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/mideast/palmanda.htm ) expropriated it from the Italians (who, allied with the Germans, were fighting against them) and used it as headquarters and housing for the RAF.
• When the British left in 1948, Israel managed to take it over. Jordan's Arab Legion shelled it. You can see damage to the facade. In the early 1950s, Italy demanded that Israel repair it. Israel replied that it was Jordan that damaged it Eventually Italy and Israel agreed to a sale of the building.
• The church was deconsecrated and now sports a huge mezzuzah. The bare rectangles along the walls once held coats of arms of Italian families or cities. Pressure from a type of religious Jews who don't like crosses and think history largely irrelevant caused the city to remove these symbols.
• After walking west in the warm sunshine along Rehov HaNeviim, we turned to get a good view of the back of the building from the plaza where the RAF's tennis courts used to be.
• See http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/12/frutiger.html and http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/12/ethiopian-church.html for the beginning and the end of the walk along the Street of the Prophets. But there's more in the middle.

Copyright 2006 Jane S. Fox

Frutiger

• Johannes Frutiger, a Swiss Protestant, came to Jerusalem in 1858, working for a trading company. A bank he helped found became the largest bank in the Ottoman province and financed the railway from Jaffa to Jerusalem.
• Along with Joseph Navon and Shalom Konstrum he is credited with financing the building of the Mahaneh Yehuda Neighborhood after which the shouk (http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/06/abundance.html ) is named.
• The 40-room house that Frutiger build for his family (he and his wife had 14 children) later became rental property. Menachem Ussishkin (http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/06/jerusalem-street-poetry.html ) was a tenant when the 1926 earthquake damaged the Augusta Victoria (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augusta_Victoria ) building where the British High Commisioner (http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/mideast/palmanda.htm )lived. The British expropriated the building for their man until Armon HaNatziv was built for him (http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/10/haas-and-goldman-promenades.html ).
• The Frutiger house is called Beit Mahanaim. It now houses part of the Ministry of Education. It is on the corner of Shivtei Yisrael and Rehov HaNeviim (http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/10/street-of-prophets.html ). It was the first stop on the 2.75 hour walking tour of three blocks along the Street of the Prophets.
  Copyright 2006 Jane S. Fox

Ethiopian Church

• Today we went on one of those walking tours thatcovers 3 blocks in 2.5 hours -- and that's with the guide saying, "I don't have time on such a short tour to tell you all about" this building or that family.
• Rehov Etyopia runs north from Rehov HaNevi'im (the Street of the Prophets), about which more later. Several buldings along the street belong to the Ethiopean Church, which has a long connectiion with Jerusalem. When the Italians conquered Ethiopia in 1936 (in order to show that they could have an empire), Emperor Haile Selassie lived in Rehavia for a year. He is entered in the rolls of residents with his occupation given as "King of Ethiopia." In Hebrew, "king" is a more honored word than "emperor."
• We ended up at the round Ethiopean church, in a walled compoud a little way up the street. Probably every chruch you've seen has a rectangular structure. In this one, the altar is inthe middle of the circle. It has its own smaller dome inside the building's large one. Like the Greek Orthodox, the Ethiopeans hide the altar table behind a partition, so the mystery of the mass is not visible to the congregation.
• The Ethiopeans remove their shoes before entering the bldg. We all went in barefoot or in stocking feet.
• Lapped eastern rogs cover the floor. A bench runs around the outer wall.Otherwise there is no seating. Perhaps congregants sit on the floor, or perhaps, like the Russian Orthodox, they stand throughout the service.
• Around the compoud are houses for the community.
• Outside the wall, across the street, is the house where Eliezer Ben Yehuda lived for many years with his family.

Copyright 2006 Jane S. Fox